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Is DBA a career path for someone who dislikes programming?

Its all in the subject folks. Coming from an MSCE background, the programming I've done is very little to nothing and it certainly does not interest me whatsover. I'd like to know if you guys think its a good idea to go the DBA way keeping in the view the circumstances.

Its all in the subject folks. Coming from an MSCE background, the programming I've done is very little to nothing and it certainly does not interest me whatsover. I'd like to know if you guys think its a good idea to go the DBA way keeping in the view the circumstances.

Thank you and I look forward to all your opinions

R

What do you do when there is a need to script something? Will you be asked to write any database triggers, or pl/sql code to log things in the database? At some point taking a no coding perspective will hurt you. But it mostly depends on what you want out of the job and who you work for. But try not to limit yourself too much. You should try to learn a few languages from shell scripting in Bash, a little perl, or even some Java. If you don't you might end up doing really basic support.

I have fallen into the same trap. Starting in a job where they have toad and oem installed on a windows platform to do the coding for you. I have gone on to learn on AIX, Redhat and Solaris. I can setup a 3 node 9i and 10g rac clusters but my sql and pl/sql is of a poor standard.

It is very important to learn sql and pl/sql and develop them as foundation skills.

Is DBA a career path for someone who dislikes programming?

I guess I have no other option but to then if I want to be a DBA. Are they any books you guys can recommended for a novice programmer wrt shell scripting, perl and java?

and thank you very much for the replies.

Dear Wannabelean,

I can try to answer from a DBA point of view when I first started for real in 1996, my first experience with oracle started way back in 1989. I can only tell you it takes a lot of learning, learning, learning and hard work, hard work, hard work. Including weekeds, after hours, any time during the day. My work does not start at 8AP and finish at 5PM. Have that in mind if you want to have a good DBA career. You will have to sacrifice a lot of your normal living, unless you want to be a lazy DBA or you find a comapany with one database server not working during weekends, but doesn't pay much.

The other question is - what do you mean by having a DBA career? Do you want to travel all over the world in some times, or do you want to : wake up at 8AM, go home at 5PM, go to sleep at 10PM (no night phone calls), have all your weekends and holidays for youself? You must decide what you want.

As for me I am a hard working guy and I love challenges. But I certainly do not regret any day of my life while being a DBA. This is the life style I like.

I started as a system analyst (SQL, Pro*C, C, etc.), after a few years I became a DBA. The point is, you will never be a good DBA without the knowledge of scritping and without the knowledge of how an application works, someday a programmer will come to you aks for help with his SQL or Pro*c or XML, whatever. And you must be the one who knows everything, that's what people will expect. And you will be on your own someday where nobody will help you. It's an everyday task for me to write scripts for:
- monitoring a database
- executing application stuff and monitoring
- automating DBA stuff, especially backups, collecting statistics, etc.
- suggesting programming solutions to my collegues and solving their problems.

You cannot work as a DBA without working without a team of programmers. If you do not have a programmer department, one day you will meet another company who will deliver an application, so you must cooperate with them.

As to books, well, try Oracle Press , because it is hard to read the regular Oracle documentation, that I admit.
"www" .mhprofessional.com/category/?cat=7&promocode=
I think those are the best books, although very expensive.

UNIX or Windows scripting - well, it's hard for me to suggest anything, for years I have been using Shell's, CMD scripts, I can hardly remember any books I read. I mainly use the MAN pages or use goolge for examples in the Internet. You will still find many examples in the Oracle docs, or register on metalink.oracle.com. Try not to buy books, as they are expensive. Or go to a shop to browse through some of them.

Through all my working days I was lucky my companies offered me Oracle courses, good for beginners, privately quite expensive. But that's how you gain knowledge. Experience comes only with hard work. There is no Oracle certificate that will help you. Many times I saw DBA's calling for help on metalink asking : "I have an OCP, now I am in a new company, there is no other DBA and I don't know how to create a database, can someone help me?"

Wish you good luck,
Richard.

"Whenever you want to learn the basics about Oracle - start from the Oracle Concepts Guide."

Its all in the subject folks. Coming from an MSCE background, the programming I've done is very little to nothing and it certainly does not interest me whatsover. I'd like to know if you guys think its a good idea to go the DBA way keeping in the view the circumstances.

Thank you and I look forward to all your opinions

R

I think you're maybe going about this in the wrong way. Are you a logical, organised person or can you learn to become one? PL/SQL is a particularly easy language to learn and I certainly wouldn't let a lack of programming experience put you off becoming a dba.

There are other DBA attributes more important than being an ace programmer, however as all the others have said, at some point you'll want to accomplish certain tasks that lend themselves to shell scripts, PL/SQL or maybe Perl or Java.

But, when they occur just look at them as opportunities to learn - that's one of the perks of being a DBA, there's always more stuff to learn. If learning new things every day doesn't interest you then look for a different career path.